Software and hardware systems are tested for accuracy, speed, reliability and any of a variety of other factors using test systems. Software and hardware systems subject to such testing are known as “systems under test” (SUT). Manual (i.e., human) assistance is often necessary for a test system to execute testing instructions on a SUT, to monitor the SUT for proper performance, to collect test results, and to perform other such testing functions. Further, testing a SUT often requires transferring testing agents (e.g., executable files, IBM® Rational Agents, HP® Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP) Agents) to the SUT. Because these test systems require extensive manual assistance, and because the use of testing agents is often necessary, the test systems often are undesirably slow, time consuming, prone to error, expensive, difficult to manage and difficult to use on more than one SUT at a time.